MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
The smallest version of a product that delivers real value to real users and produces evidence about whether the idea works.
Process & MethodsThe operative word is viable, not minimum. An MVP has to be genuinely usable for one job by one audience — a narrow product that works, not a broad product that half works. Choosing the scope means choosing which assumption you are testing, and everything not needed to test it is out, including most settings, most integrations and most edge cases.
The common distortion is an MVP defined by what the team can build in a quarter rather than by what it would prove. That produces a feature list with no hypothesis, so launch generates activity but not evidence. If you cannot say in advance what result would make you stop, it is a first release, not an MVP — which is fine, but it should be named honestly.
In practice
An AI product planned a full workspace with teams, roles and billing. Before: nine-month estimate, nothing shipped. After cutting to a single-user tool answering one question, it launched in seven weeks and showed people used it daily but would not pay at the planned price. The catch — that finding invalidated the pricing model the raise had been built on.
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Frequently Asked Questions
How small should an MVP be?
Small enough to ship in weeks, complete enough that a real user can finish one valuable task without help. If they need a workaround or a call with your team to get value, the scope is still too thin.
Is an MVP the same as a prototype?
No. A prototype simulates the product for testing and is thrown away; an MVP is real software real users depend on. Confusing the two produces either throwaway code in production or a prototype nobody dares to change.
Related terms
All terms- PrototypingBuilding a simulated version of a product or flow — from paper to clickable to coded — in order to test an idea before committing to it.
- Product-Market FitThe point at which a product satisfies a real market demand strongly enough that usage and revenue grow without being pushed.
- Design SprintA time-boxed process, classically five days, that takes a team from a hard product question to a tested prototype without building anything.
- User ResearchThe systematic study of users' goals, behaviour and context — through interviews, observation and analysis — to inform what gets designed and built.
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